Over the past year and a half, former Chief Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy, despite losing power to the BJP, has been seen as being “soft” towards the B.S. Yediyurappa government. In a gesture that is seen as returning the favour, the Chief Minister has come to Mr. Kumaraswamy’s support after farmers’ leader hurled criticism at him.
While Mr. Kumaraswamy has refused to attack the government on issues such as floods and the handling of COVID-19, even as the Congress has raised claims of mismanagement, eyebrows were raised after Mr. Yediyurappa publicly came to Mr. Kumaraswamy’s support on Saturday.
“It is condemnable that [KRRS leader] Kodihalli Chandrashekar has used inappropriate language about former Chief Minister Kumaraswamy,” Mr. Yediyurappa said in a statement.
Though Mr. Yediyurappa is seen as being considerate towards the Assembly constituencies represented by Janata Dal (S) legislators in respect to release of grants, political circles are agog with the increasing bonhomie between the two leaders. Over the past few months, a couple of meetings between the two leaders had sparked off speculation about a possible alignment between the two parties, an idea dismissed by Mr. Kumaraswamy. The JD(S) lending support to the Land Reforms (Second) Amendment Bill in the Legislative Council recently, where the BJP lacked numbers, triggered more speculation.
Politically, the JD(S) is now seeing the Congress as its main rival over the BJP as it fights the Congress in its traditional voter base of Old Mysore. It is afraid of an erosion of its voter base because of its alignment with the Congress to form the coalition government.
Sources in the Chief Minister’s Office said that nothing much should be read into the CM’s note and that it was only a general statement. “The Chief Minister has a good rapport with people across the political spectrum. Politics is different. He felt decency had to be maintained and Mr. Chandrashekar’s statements against Mr. Kumaraswamy lacked that,” a source said.
